Dear Lifehacker,
How can I check and see how much bandwidth I've been using? Is there any way to keep a running tally of my bandwidth so I can see when I use the most, or if something's using a lot of bandwidth that I'm not aware of?

I've been known to go over my 250 GB bandwidth cap in my apartment. I was pretty happy to hear that my ISP is ditching flat caps, but I'm worried about their new "tiered" approach and possible overage fees.

Sincerely,
Data Hog

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Dear Data Hog,
I've been known to crash through the occasional bandwidth cap too, especially now that I've cut the cable and use streaming video for a lot of television and music. As demand for those services rises, it's natural that your ISP will have to adapt to it—and right now they're adapting by offering to charge us more money for bandwidth. Whether you think it's good or bad, there are plenty of ways you can keep track of what you use so you don't run afoul of their caps. Here's how to get started.

Install a Bandwidth Monitor On Your Computer

If your computer is the only one in your house, or your bandwidth use is the only use that matters to you, you can install a bandwidth monitor on your computer to track how much data you consume. This method won't catch any other devices on your home network like roomates, your smartphone, a tablet, or anything else, but it will give you a good idea how much data each of your computers uses during your regular activities. Here are a few app suggestions to get you started:

Windows

Networx (Windows) is a free utility that lives in the taskbar and will monitor bandwidth used on all adapters. It also tallies total usage by day, week, and month, lets you export that data.

NetLimiter (Windows) takes bandwidth monitoring a step further, and also tracks bandwidth used per application. The utility also does bandwidth shaping, and will limit transfer rates for specific applications so they don't slow down other applications (if you're willing to pay for the $20 Lite or $30 Pro versions.)

SurplusMeter (OS X) is a free Mac utility we've mentioned that gets the job done, complete with graphs and tallies of your daily, weekly, and monthly bandwidth use, and your total bandwidth used against your monthly cap.

iStat Pro (OS X) is a free Dashboard widget that, in addition to monitoring your bandwidth, keeps track of your overall system health. It's not designed exclusively for bandwidth monitoring, but will display activity and total usage. If'd rather have a menubar app instead of a Dashboard widget, $16 will get you iStat Menus.

Activity Monitor (OS X) is built-in to OS X, and while it also won't collect bandwidth data and report totals to you, it also lets you keep an eye on your total usage since your last system reboot.

Linux

Ifstat (Linux) is a super-lightweight bandwidth moitor for Linux that supports Linux, BSD, Solaris, IRIX, and more. It doesn't have a ton of features on its own, but if you want to build something to collect bandwidth data, this tool will monitor your network interfaces.

BandwidthD (Linux) monitors your bandwidth, but also collects it into a database, builds graphs and charts, and will display your total bandwdith used over time.

Darkstat (Linux) captures your traffic and organizes it into reports for you, organized by traffic per host, posrts per host, and more. The tool can even show you where those hosts connected.

All of these utilities will help you keep track of how much data your one computer is using. If you have an iOS or Android device on your home network as well, check out our picks for best data usage trackers for Android and for iOS. Most don't differentiate between LAN traffic among computers on your network and traffic to and from the internet though, so take your tallies with a grain of salt.

Whether you have an unlimited data plan or you're interested in carefully monitoring the…
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Monitor Your Network-Wide Bandwidth Use at the Router

For even more accuracy, you can track your bandwidth usage at the router level, assuming you have your own router and access to it. If your router is running its stock firmware, log in and see if it has built-in traffic monitoring. For example, my Netgear N750 can monitor traffic against a total bandwidth cap for me, and if I select it, will even flash the "Internet" connection LED or disable my connection entirely when I've hit the cap. More and more routers are coming with this option pre-configured to make it easy to manage caps. If your router doesn't have built-in monitoring though, you can hack it so it does with a custom firmware:

Monitoring your bandwidth usage at the router level is probably the most accurate method, since it includes any mobile or guest devices on your home network, and excludes traffic among computers on your home LAN.

Check Your Bandwidth Use at Your ISP's Web Site

Of course, you can tally bandwdith used by all of your systems at home for months and show it to your ISP, but the only tally that really matters is the one your ISP has collected. You should definitely track your own usage, if for no other reason than to have your own evidence in case of a dispute, but you should also visit your ISP's site and see if they make your bandwidth totals available.

Comcast's Customer Portal shows you how much bandwidth you've used, how much is remaining, and your totals for the past few months, although they don't break down what type of traffic used the most bandwidth.

AT&T's monitoring portal shows you much of the same information. You'll see total usage, bandwidth remaining, and your total upload/total download for the current and previous months.

Time Warner's Bandwidth Meter is hidden behind a login page, but once you're in, you can see a running tally of your bandwdith used versus the cap for your broadband plan.

Charter Cable's customer portal will also tell you how much data you've used versus your plan's data cap, along with options for upgraded plans which include more bandwidth. (If you're in a location where this is available—we're hearing not all Charter customers have it.)

Rogers Cable's customer portal also shows you your monthly total, totals from previous months, and your amount of bandwidth remaining. Rogers is at least kind enough to break down your totals by upload and download and will show you what—if any—overage charges you've accumulated.

ISPs without bandwidth caps (most notably Verizon in the US, for example) usually don't bother with a tool on their customer portals to show you how much you're using, so monitoring is up to you. (If your ISP has a customer portal page or a specific bandwidth monitoring page that's not listed here, let us know about it in the comments below.)

Hopefully we've given you the tools you can use to get your bandwidth usage under control, Data Hog! Just remember that if you're trusting your ISP to track your bandwidth and you start to go over, it might be time to monitor it yourself to see what it is that's using so much data—whether it's all the streaming video you enjoy, or hours upon hours of internet radio. Good luck!